


This Time I'm Not

by unsettled



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Cuddling, Gen, Multi, OT6, h/c bingo amnesty challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-01
Updated: 2014-03-01
Packaged: 2018-01-14 03:31:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1251142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unsettled/pseuds/unsettled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark isn't used to having a team yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Time I'm Not

**Author's Note:**

> For the February amnesty postage stamp challenge. Prompts: loss of limb/limb function, abandonment issues, headaches/migraines, group support

He jerks awake, confused, hurting.

It's dark, darker than it should be, than it ever has been since he's had the arc reactor stuck in him. Dark, and silent, and he _hurts_. 

Really, it's that more than anything that tells him what's going on. 

"Jarvis," he groans, "what happened?"

"You had a building fall on you, sir," comes the reply. 

"Well that wasn't the smartest move ever," he mutters, and tries to move. 

Tries. 

Tries, because nothing is moving. It's not just the suit, though it's not responding to his commands either. He can't move below the neck, nothing, not even a finger twitch. He strains for movement, but there's nothing. "Jarvis," he says again, his voice a little shaker this time. "You're going to have to take control of the suit, get me out of here." He can't even lift his head enough to see if anything is pining him down. 

"I’m afraid that's not going to be possible, sir," Jarvis says, and there's a edge of static to his voice that should not be there. "The suit is completely unresponsive, although your reactor appears to be functioning normally. I’ve been attempting to contact -" His voice fizzes out for a moment, then comes back, even more staticy. "But it appears-" and the static roars.

"J," Tony says, "J, come on, come on."

"I’m sor – seems – will -"

"Don't leave me, buddy," Tony whispers, and there's no reply but silence. 

If he could bang his head back against whatever he's lying on, he would, but he has to settle for closing his eyes. "Shit." How far did the problem with Jarvis go? Was it just the suit, or was it deeper, someone (somehow) managing to hack in? Would Jarvis be able to tell the other Avengers where he was? Surely someone had seen it happen, would know where to at least start looking for him. 

He's been in tight situations before, in dark ones, in claustrophobic ones, in ones with no hope of escape. But all at the same time, with him at this level of helplessness? That's new. That's new, and _awful_. He can't help himself – he can't even move. He can't even see. 

But he has a team now, right? So they'll find him, right? Right. 

He tries to calm his breathing when he notices it's ratcheted up, but the suit feels like a coffin now, the tight, close space of it pressing in on him like the trap it's become. Without light, he feels lost, suspended, unable to track anything. It's nothing like the terror of space. There has to be something on his chest, blocking the light, because despite the pain it doesn't feel like it's centered in his chest, no shrapnel inching closer. 

He waits. 

Waits, and runs out of patience in what is probably seconds, but feels like ages. At least twenty minutes, right? Cause even if it feels like hours, it can't really be, so twenty minutes, that's a reasonable amount of time to loose patience. He's got a great time sense, really, even if he seldom chooses to utilize it, but here, here, in the dark, everything is thrown off balance. 

The minutes tick by, endlessly, and he starts to wonder. It's been … it's been a while, he sure of it, maybe even quite a while, and he's heard nothing. Surely there'd be some sort of noise by now, with them digging to get him out. Surely they're looking for him. He's got a team now.

Except he's never had a team before, never had anyone to depend on other than himself, never had anyone around to rescue him. So the thoughts creep up as the time slides by. Maybe. 

Maybe they're not coming. 

Maybe they didn't win. Maybe they had to leave him behind, retreat, still fighting. Maybe they forgot about him. Maybe they assumed he'd be fine, that he could take care of himself. Maybe they hadn't noticed, weren't even looking, thinking he'd just scrammed before he could get roped into debrief. 

All his efforts to stay calm fall apart in seconds, his heart beating too fast, his breath catching in his chest. This is something eh should know, because people don't come looking for him, not unless they want something, people leave when he's too much of an ass, and he's always too much of an ass. 

_Don't leave me here,_ his mind whispers, and he voices the thought a moment later, a breath at first. "Don't leave me behind, guys," he gasps out, and then a shout, pulled out of him to echo against the helmet before he can catch it. "Don't leave me!" 

If he could move, he'd be thrashing, pounding against this prison. If he could move, he wouldn't be in this position at all, but he _can't_ , and so he loses it for a few minutes in his head. 

There's a crackle in his ear, and then "Iron Man? Iron Man, can you hear us?"

"Fuck," Tony nearly shouts. "I can hear you, I can hear you, where the hell are you?"

"Iron Man? Are you there? Stark?" and just like that, Steve's voice goes from the most welcome thing to another source of panic.

"I can hear you!" 

"Is anyone hearing anything?" Steve makes a frustrated noise. The others chime in, and no one is hearing him. 

"Don't leave," Tony says, even if they can't hear him. "I’m right here. I’m right here, dammit."

There's more silence after that, silence and silence and -

and then there's light. There's light, and movement, and Thor's face, worried, staring down at him through a space between two twisted metal bars and a ton of rubble. Tony could almost cry with relief. 

They didn't leave him.

*

It takes them a while longer to dig him out; Thor and Steve might be plenty strong to lift everything covering him, but it's a delicate game of 'what won't make everything else shift and impale Tony' that they're playing. He can see them, and hear them, very faintly, through the helmet, though his comms have crapped out again, but to them, he's not moving, not responding, likely injured badly, and he can see the worry clear on their faces. 

When they finally free him, Steve ends up prying the face plate up, as carefully as he can. Tony grins, though he knows it's probably a weak imitation of his normal shit eating grins. "Hey," he says, and Steve breaks into a smile of his own. "What took you so long?"

Thor laughs at that, and Natasha rolls his eyes, and everything's ok. Well. Everything except for the fact that he still can't move, a fact which makes all smiles disappear as Steve shouts for medical. 

Turns out it's some chemical weapon from their villain of the week, and Clint takes a moment to be impressed by the fact that one of those darts actually found a way through a seam in the armor. "I could totally do that," he says, "Totally. But no way he managed to do that, talk about dumb luck." Tony's busy going over ways to reinforce the seams even more than they already are (it's already waterproof, for fucks sake, he thinks) but he's relieved to hear that since they know what this is, they have a cure ready. One shot and four hours later, he's moving around again. 

Jarvis is fine, if apologetic; Tony tells him he did the best he could, guiding the Avengers to where Tony was trapped and analyzing the rubble so they could dig him out without crushing him, without having to wait any longer. He was only trapped for two hours, they tell him, and he doesn't tell them how long it felt. 

He's down in the workshop reassuring Jarvis and running some numbers on reinforced fabrics when Steve hauls him off to bed. "You need to rest," he says, speaking right over Tony's protests. "They said that cure was going to wipe you out. Bed," he says, and marches Tony off. 

It's not like Tony wouldn't mind resting a bit – he aches all over and his head is pounding, throbbing, just like the medic warned him it would. He knows he should rest. He knows they think he can't do any real work like this (like he hasn't come up with brilliant ideas under far worse headaches than this, please), and that he's just going to make them shift from worried to annoyed if he doesn't rest, but he _can't_. 

Because people leave unless he can offer them something. He can't have a weakness like this, he has to make up for it. Has to have something to give them, something to make them see that he's trying. Right now, he just can't stand being alone, having them leave even the small distance to the common living room for a post fight movie, even if the noise from it from rooms away makes his head pulse. 

"Sir," Jarvis starts when he gets up, not that long after Steve has left, has gone to join the others. "Sir, this isn't wise." 

"Jarvis," he says, drawing it out, turning it into a whine. "Stop mothering me, I’ve got enough people trying to do that." He stumbles down the hall; the cure may have given him back motor control, but it's not perfect yet, leaving him unusually clumsy. The noise of the tv makes him flinch, yet he stops, stares at the door of the living room, torn between it and the workshop. He wavers. 

And then the decision in made for him, as Steve pokes his head out the door. "Tony?" he says, startled, but not surprised, faintly annoyed. "What are you doing up?" 

He means to say something clever, something deflecting, something that won't just get him hauled off back to bed. But what comes out instead is "Um." 

Natasha pokes her head out the other side of the door frame and frowns at him. "You're supposed to be in bed," she tells him. "We can turn the movie down if it's hurting your head."

"Or up!" Clint shouts from inside the room, and if Clint could see it Tony would cheerfully flip him off. He considers doing so anyway. 

"Uh," he says again, and now he's starting to worry that maybe that cure messed with his brain a bit, because words, Tony, words. "I need to go to the shop," he says, but he doesn't move, doesn't take a step closer to that hallway, because it's not true, that's not what he needs right now. 

Steve shakes his head and steps up to him. "That's the last thing you need right now, Tony," he says, and has him turned around and steered back towards his room before Tony quite realizes what is going on. He casts a glance back over his shoulder at the living room, at everyone else, together. 

He needs to pull himself together, that's what he needs. 

He lets Steve push him back into bed (lets! Ha!), where he flops down and sighs dramatically, because let it never be said he lets the opportunity for a good sulk pass him by. He's expecting the amused smile and the head shake from Steve, and he gets them. 

He's not so much expecting how Steve shoves Tony's leg aside and flops down on his back next to him. Tony stares at him. Opens his mouth. 

Only to have his "What?" end up directed at Bruce as he walks in and sits on the side of the bed, a bit tentatively. Bruce smiles at him, that soft fond smile that's less rare than it used to be. 

"Natasha said we're overdue for some 'team bonding'," he says. 

"By which she meant puppy pile," Clint says as Natasha drags him in behind her, followed by an "Ow!" as she smacks him upside the head. He tilts forward and face plants onto the bed, legs dangling off as he mutters. 

Tony stares at them for a moment, blankly, until Thor bounds in, the happy eagerness on his face too much. He cracks up, throwing an arm over his eyes. "You guys," he starts. Steve pries his arm up and smiles at him, only to get a wide eyed look on his face as he glances up. 

"Thor, no!" he yelps, but it's too late. Thor takes a running leap and crashes down onto the bed as everyone else scrambles away. 

The mattress sproing's and everyone bounces for a moment, sprawling over Thor as they land. Even Natasha, though Tony's pretty sure that was on purpose. Tony can't seem to stop laughing (laughing, not giggling, he's not _giggling_ , shut up Clint) but everyone else has on the loose, easy smiles that are hard to come by. They've done this before, but it's usually to comfort Thor, when he's recently gotten news about Loki, or Steve, when he can't seem to get warm, or Clint, when there's been whispers of mind control, or – or, well, all of them, so far, except Tony. 

Maybe it's just his turn. 

They settle in, shifting and poking at each other until no one's elbow is in an uncomfortable place ("I know you’re doing that on purpose, Bruce,"), until somehow Tony is the one surrounded by everyone else rather than Thor, somehow in contact with every other person. 

He sighs, and even if he shouldn't be taking advantage of this, shouldn't be letting them burrow in like this, he closes his eyes, relaxes. 

No one's leaving right now.


End file.
